A Study of the Result from Palliative Care Program in End Stage of Cancer Patients in Samphran Hospital, Nakhon Pathom Province

Abstract

In this study, the results of palliative care program in end stage of cancer patients in Samphran Hospital were investigated by using descriptive retro-cohort design. The purposive sampling of 115 patients (62 females & 53 males) with end stage cancer, whose Palliative Performance scale was ≤50%, was conducted from 2020, September 1st to 2022 March 31^st in the palliative care clinic. The studied population was followed up from patient’s registration until death.

Based of the result, we found that most of age between 60-70 years old. Most of the studied subjects were advance stage lung  cancer patients 24.3%, liver cancer 20%, breast cancer 11.3%. The initial symptoms using from research instruments are Edmonton Symptom Assessment System (ESAS) that led to the treatment in palliative program were Median (Mdn) and Interquartile (IQR) were fatigue (Mdn=8, IQR=5-9), pain (Mdn=7, IQR=4-8), dyspnea (Mdn=7, IQR=4-8), anorexia (Mdn=6.5, IQR=4-8), drowsiness (Mdn=4, IQR=1-5), nausea (Mdn=4, IQR=1-5),  depression (Mdn=2, IQR=0-4), anxiety (Mdn=2, IQR=0-4), respectively. After receiving interventions from the palliative care program, the post-treatment follow-up revealed significantly decreased severity of symptoms, including dyspnea, pain, fatigue, anorexia, nausea, depress and insomnia (p<0.05). One hundred and four patients (90.4%) access to strong opioids. One hundred and fourteen patients (99.1%) died peacefully according to their advance care plans, while only one patient (0.9%) experienced unexpected death.

Hopefully, this research might be useful for end-stage of cancer care because the treatment procedure could significantly alleviate sufferings from the aforementioned symptoms and allow patients to conceivably die based on the self-caring plan.